1. Field of the Invention
The present invention, which relates to a method and system for automatically recognizing media contents, comprises the steps of 1) capturing media contents via sensors from the Internet or offline devices such as TVs, 2) extracting VDNA (Video DNA) fingerprints from captured contents and transferring to the backend servers for identification, 3) backend servers process the VDNA fingerprints and reply with identified result. Specifically, the present invention relates to facilitating automatic recognition of media contents from both online and offline.
2. Description of the Related Art
The modern media industry continuously outputs huge amount of media contents with restricted copyrights. These contents are distributed via various transmission methods such as on broadcasting networks like TV/radio stations, on cinema, by DVD (digital video disc) copies, or through the Internet. Usually, people use metadata of the media content to identify them, such as video title, posters, casts including director, main actors and actress etc. But, using only metadata as identification means is not sufficient. There are times when people mistake different movies with same or similar titles, or they cannot remember the name of media content that they are interested in. Such problems make it difficult for studios in the media industry to distribute and promote their works.
In the earlier years, media contents were distributed through very limited ways. The most common ways were through TV (television) broadcast and via the cinema. In those times, content owners did not need to worry about illegal copies of their works. Everything they needed to do was to make people aware of their artworks. Content owners notified people or consumers about their works by postal mails or by broadcast advertisement through TV. Content owners simply benefit from selling movie tickets to audiences.
As the gradually popularity of the Internet, there are more and more ways for content owner to distribute their works, also it becomes easier for people to obtain information of their favorite media contents. But with the increasing number of distribution ways, it is more difficult for content owners to protect copyrights of their media contents. Illegal copies of media contents are easily downloaded or shared on the Internet, through UGC (user generated content) websites or P2P (point to point) networks. Content owners are having severe challenges to leverage the online propagation of their media contents against economical loss brought by pirated contents. Users, on the other hand, may not have valid and efficient means to distinguish between legal and pirated media contents.
Violation of media copyrights not only appears on the Internet, unauthorized contents are also found on the TV broadcasting network, which makes it more difficult for content owners to discover and record illegal usage of their contents. The reason lies in 1) there are huge number of TV stations broadcasting globally at the same time, 2) ways of recording and analyzing broadcasting signals are not as mature as those on the Internet. Some TV stations use illegal copies of media content to attract audience and benefit from them. TV stations using illegal contents may change some metadata of the media content so that content owner maybe confused even when they are monitoring the TV signals. But by changing the basic information of the media content such as title and director etc. will be acceptable for audiences who are actually watching the content, since that complementary information would not affect the experience of media content itself.
Companies and studios in the media industry generate revenue through the following ways:                1) By selling copies of the media contents, such as CD copies of audio, DVD copies of movie, file copies on Internet, box office from the cinemas, or even VOD (video on demand) from online or digital TV networks, etc. Content owners would publish a lot of related information including posters, short video samples for previewing, news release conference and so on. All of these are used to attract audiences and help them remember their new works.        2) By embedding advertisement inside media contents. Content owners are compensated by view or click count of advertisements.        3) By selling the copyright of their media contents to those who deals with associated commodities related to the media content. Content owners may be paid by the authorization of copies. But content owners are hardly possible to control the copyright of their artworks all over the world. There always been people who use the contents without any authorized copyright.        4) And so on . . .        
Therefore, content owners will face tremendous loss of revenue if they fail to control misuse or deliberately usage of illegal or unauthorized media contents from both online and offline.
Conventionally, most content owners employ a lot of human resources to monitor on every possible way where their media contents may be illegally copied or shared. For example they hire employees to surf on the Internet and discover illegal copies of media contents on different websites and file sharing networks such as BT and eDonkey etc., and to watch TV on different TV channels so as to monitor whether or not their media contents are illegally used. Due to the enormous size of the Internet and huge amount of TV broadcasting channels globally, it is impossible for content owners to monitor every ways of usage and sharing of their contents, also the cost would be to huge which makes it not feasible.
Content owners and other organizations have invented a lot of method to recognize the media contents automatically:                1) Keywords: The keywords specified by content owners that can be identify the media content. Not only in earlier years, but also in the recent years, it is very popular and practical for content owners to identify their media contents using keywords. For example we use word avatar, which is the title of movie <Avatar> to identify that movie, while sharing it between people all over the world.        2) File hash: The hash of the media content file. Each media content can be saved as a file, and each file can be identified by a hash. A unique file hash is generated from the content file itself. Any small change of file can make a difference on the related hash.        3) Watermark: Modify the original media content to embed extra information in the media content file, which is difficult or not possible to be removed and has very limited influence to the content. Although the influence is limited, the modification has been made and the media is changed permanently.        
There are disadvantages on methods mentioned above.
As time goes on, there have been more and more media contents produced by various content owners. There are many albums or movies that have identical keywords. It is no longer convenient to identify media contents using single keyword. Although people can apply multiple keywords, the power of keywords to identify the media content is getting weaken.
File hash is very accurate and sensitive, and it is useful when identifying files with same content. But the accuracy becomes its disadvantage when identifying the files. Because it is common for people to change the size and format of media content file so that it is more suitable to play on mobile devices or transfer over networks. When the file size or format is changed, the content of file will be changed so as the file hash. Since there have been many different types of copies for same media content all over the Internet, it is impossible for content owners to provide every hash of all of their media contents.
The watermark is a better way for people to recognize the media content since it is difficult to change or remove it. But it alters the original media content and making non-reversible changes to the media content. So it is not common in the world for content owners to identify their artworks using watermarks.
As various media contents being accumulated and propagated over the Internet, conventional technologies cannot satisfy content owners' requirement to track and monitor their content owners.
The present invention enables automatic content recognition. The VDNA (Video DNA) fingerprinting technology uses the information that extracted from the media content to identify the content. It identifies media content by comparing the fingerprint data of the content with the fingerprint data in a database with media contents registered by content owners. The system and method introduced in this patent applies VDNA technology combined with other traditional recognition methods.
The VDNA (Video DNA) technology overcomes the disadvantages of the traditional methods. It does not need to change the media content like the watermark method does. It does not use hash to compare media content, so that it allows media content not exactly same as the original media content. It does not use keyword to identify the media content so that it still works with media contents with same keywords.